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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTE | EXAMPLES | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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OPENVT(1) General Commands Manual OPENVT(1)
openvt - start a program on a new virtual terminal (VT).
openvt [-c vtnumber] [OPTIONS] [--] command
openvt will find the first available VT, and run on it the given
command with the given command options , standard input, output
and error are directed to that terminal. The current search path
($PATH) is used to find the requested command. If no command is
specified then the environment variable $SHELL is used.
OPTIONS
-c, --console=VTNUMBER
Use the given VT number and not the first available. Note
you must have write access to the supplied VT for this to
work.
-f, --force
Force opening a VT without checking whether it is already
in use.
-e, --exec
Directly execute the given command, without forking. This
option is meant for use in /etc/inittab.
-s, --switch
Switch to the new VT when starting the command. The VT of
the new command will be made the new current VT.
-u, --user
Figure out the owner of the current VT, and run login as
that user. Suitable to be called by init. Shouldn't be
used with -c or -l.
-l, --login
Make the command a login shell. A - is prepended to the
name of the command to be executed.
-v, --verbose
Be a bit more verbose.
-w, --wait
wait for command to complete. If -w and -s are used
together then openvt will switch back to the controlling
terminal when the command completes.
-V, --version
print program version and exit.
-h, --help
show this text and exit.
-- end of options to openvt.
If openvt is compiled with a getopt_long() and you wish to set
options to the command to be run, then you must supply the end of
options -- flag before the command.
openvt can be used to start a shell on the next free VT, by using
the command:
openvt bash
To start the shell as a login shell, use:
openvt -l bash
To get a long listing you must supply the -- separator:
openvt -- ls -l
Earlier, openvt was called open. It was written by Jon Tombs
<jon@gtex02.us.es> or <jon@robots.ox.ac.uk>. The -w idea is from
"sam".
chvt(1), deallocvt(1), vlock(1), login(1)
This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩. If you have a bug report for this
manual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/legionus/kbd.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-07-01.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
kbd 24 October 2024 OPENVT(1)
Pages that refer to this page: chvt(1), deallocvt(1), fgconsole(1), vlock(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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